Iraq: The underprepared recruits bolstering the Iraqi army

Ruth Sherlock reports from Najaf where volunteers are being used to
help the Iraqi army who went in woefully underprepared to fight Isis

By Ruth Sherlock in Najaf; Video by Sam Tarling

7:00AM BST 11 Jul 2014

Dressed in mismatched khaki military uniforms, boots loosely tied and paunches showing, the volunteers held on to each other's shoulders as they practised marching in the roasting desert heat.

Nearby, young men dashed for cover, running across the car park of the Iraqi military training centre waving plastic Kalashnikov.

As jihadists from the Islamic State vow to smite Iraq's Shia population and topple the Shia majority government, thousands of men from the sect have answered a call by the nation's political and religious leaders to take up arms.

Iraqi government television stations are alive with patriotic declarations of the "might" of their new fighting force. Shots filmed from low angles, and matched to rousing nationalistic tunes, show gargantuan soldiers armed to the teeth, their faces masked to instil fear.

But a visit to the training bases unveils another, much more disturbing, reality of young men, many of them day labourers, who are innocent of experience of war and woefully underprepared for battle.

With the Iraqi army withered after tens of thousands of its men fled the insurgent advance in the north of the country, it is volunteers like these at a military training base outside the golden domed, holy Shia city of Najaf, who are being asked to help hold the front line to Baghdad and to the Shia majority south.

"They have the will and the ability to fight," said Captain Ziad Tarek, the head of media communications for a military training base, echoing the rhetoric aired on Iraqi government channels. "Nobody forced them to volunteer. "

Almost two thousand men were taking part in the two week training programme at the military academy visited by the Telegraph, with many more on the waiting list, military commanders said.

Troops, many of them fasting - consuming no food or water during sunlight hours - for the holy month of Ramadan, braved temperatures in excess of 50 degrees centigrade as they practiced military manoeuvres.

Eleven volunteers, huddled in the corner of a car park, each clutching a salmon coloured plastic kalashnikov as they waited for the signal from their commander. When the whistle blew, they lurched forward, guns waving erratically, and threw themselves belly down on the ground.

After scrambling ten metres on their stomachs, the men awkwardly rose to their feet and again ran forward, practising "taking cover" behind a vehicle on the other side of the concrete expanse.

"My parents support what I am doing. Of course they are scared for my life but I have a duty to perform," said Yayha Saleh, who used to run a pizza restaurant in the American city of Baltimore before he returned to Iraq and became a bricklayer.

The men are taught to assemble and disassemble an AK47 rifle and are being "prepared to use heavier weapons", commanders reported.

But the training seemed a far cry from the reality of being on the front line, having to defend territory against the Islamic State, who are now the best armed jihadist militia in the world and whose men have battle experience from the role they have played in the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

The Islamic State now also has a bank balance of $1.5 billion (£87m) and military equipment - mostly American made arms and Humvees that were seized from the fleeing Iraqi army, worth over $1 billion, according to Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi security source who has been monitoring the group.

Naim Abdul Sharif, 20, a construction worker and his four brothers all decided to volunteer for the training in Najaf: "Yes we have the ability to fight," he initially defied. Then, looking around him, he added: "Well, we will do our best."

For many of the younger volunteer recruits this is the first time they have held a weapon. Some of the older men fought in the army of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, but, after more than a decade as civilians, their memory of fighting tactics is rusty.

The same applies to some of the trainers on the base. Abu Ali, who was teaching the recruits how to handle their guns, said he had last "used a gun 20 years ago".

"I am teaching the volunteers to use the guns for war," he said. "It's been a long time since I fought. I am now a primary school teacher in my day job."

Even here, in a vital constituency for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, it is not the preservation of the Iraqi premier that is inspiring these men to fight.

Most of the Shia residents volunteered after Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most important Shia cleric, made a rare intervention in politics last month calling for men to "protect their nation".

Despite the calls by Ayatollah Sistani to preserve the "unity of Iraq", the conflict is taking on overtly sectarian overtones, with men fighting less for preservation of Iraq as a nation state, than for the preservation of their sect.

Throughout history, opponents of Shia Islam have attacked Najaf and its twin city Karbala, which together make up the spiritual heart of the religion.

In 1806 up to 4,000 people died when Sunni Wahhabi tribes entered Karbala, storming across the desert from Saudi Arabia.

After the allied invasion in 2003, Kabala and Najaf again became targets for sectarian hatred. Sunni extremists planted suicide bombs in the middle of crowds of Shia worshippers and used whatever means possible to desecrate the holy shrines.

The fear of a return to these days was palpable when the Telegraph visited Najaf's holy shrine of Imam Ali this week. Worshippers must pass rigorous and multiple security checks before they can reach the glittering inner sanctum of the golden domed shrine.

In the Shia religion, relatives bring their deceased loved ones to the shrine for a final blessing before burial. Bodies in open top coffins, scented with rose water and covered in a shroud are rested on the thick carpeted floor as the deceased's relatives kneel around them in prayer.

But not even the dead escape the indignity of body searches. Shattering the intimacy of the moment, the coffins must now pass through a large, grey, bleeping x-ray machine. Al-Qaeda extremists used to hide bombs inside corpses.

Increasingly the crises in Iraq and in Syria are merging to become one supranational conflict between Sunni and Shia factions. Many of the Shia militias who went from Iraq to Syria to fight against a Sunni insurgency there are now returning to defend their home turf.

"Tens of our young men have died fighting in Syria. They died defending their brothers against the men who would eat their flesh," said Ali Nujeifi, the son of one of Najaf's top clerics.

"These people," he added, referring to the Isis jihadists, "are vampires who are eating our flesh and sucking our blood".

The sun set over the Valley of Peace, the vast hallowed sprawl of Najaf's Shia graveyard. As the calls to prayer from the nearby mosques washed over them, families of the recent dead kneeled at the freshly dug graves to pray.

Many of the tombs bore portraits of the fresh faced young men, often pictured in uniform, who were buried there.

Some of these young men died fighting in Syria, others were soldiers in the Iraqi army. Others still were civilians: the victims of one of Iraq's litany of suicide bombings.

In a small corner of the cemetery, an employee quietly dug into the desert ground, preparing fresh plots for the new dead who would surely come.